Carlos Sorin

In 1995 Carlos Sorín was making a commercial for a telephone company in Patagonia, a huge region of southern Argentina. The purpose of the ad was to celebrate the arrival (finally) of phone service in this largely desolate, windswept area. Sorín went through his usual casting procedures and secured the services of professional actors proficient in making commercials. On arriving in the small town which would serve as the setting for the commercial, the cast and crew discovered the townspeople were just as amazed by the telephone system as they were by a film company. Realizing he might channel that excitement, Sorín decided to make the commercial with real people from the area rather than imported actors from Buenos Aires. That naturalistic commercial made history in Argentina. The protagonist was in reality the policeman of that small community. Having realized he could continue with this style, the commercial director began making commercials with other non-actors. In humility he admits, “I didn’t invent anything new. Iranian cinema was already using non-actors as was Italian neo-realism in the 40s and 50s.” However, such use of non-actors would become Sorín’s method and style once he left the world of commercials to become a full-time feature filmmaker.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1944 (by far the oldest director in this present AFS series), Carlos Sorín seemed destined to be a filmmaker. While his middle-class family was overwhelmingly into music – playing home concerts of classical music – Carlos was more drawn toward moving images. At the age of 8 he received a hand-operated toy projector, followed the next year by a 16mm projector on which he could project comic shorts of Chaplin and El Flaco y El Gordo (Laurel and Hardy) and cartoons. He often went to neighborhood movie houses and saw three movies at a time. While barely a teenager, Carlos also received a movie camera.

Following his apparent passion he went to study filmmaking at the Universidad de la Plata, one of only two film schools in Argentina at the time. Today he is very skeptical of the value of studying film in school, but he admits he was blessed with excellent professors who had also worked as professionals in the film industry. He also believes that those who attend film schools do get a lot from their fellow students – conversations, debates, arguments, and working on projects together.

After graduation he went to work for Alberto Fischerman, only seven years his senior, but a recognized feature film director since 1960. Sorin worked as assistant director on commercials with Fisherman, from whom he learned a great deal in conversation and work. For a brief while Sorin was interested in being a cinematographer and served in that capacity on three films (1970-1971), but making commercials offered better money, so from 1971 until 1986 he worked strictly in the world of TV commercials and was able to raise a family comfortably.

Within that period the military dictatorship of Argentina conducted a brutal “Dirty War” against the people of Argentina. Upon their takeover in 1976, one general predicted, “We are going to have to kill 50,000 people: 25,000 subversives, 20,000 sympathizers, and we will make 5,000 mistakes.” Many of those tens of thousands disappeared – never to be seen again. Although Carlos Sorin says nothing political in his interviews, that seven year period was not a good time for creative people in Argentina. Sorín was safer within the commercial world, but it seems obvious where his sympathies probably lay even in the 1980s, since his later films would show an inclination toward compassion for the “humble people.”

In 1983 the bloody dictatorship came to an end. Three years later, feeling something was missing from his life, Sorín decided to try his hand at directing feature films. He gave up commercials for a while, since he felt he couldn’t do both well at the same time. His first feature film was LA PELICULA DEL REY (THE KING’S MOVIE), about a director failing in his attempt to make a film about de Tounens, a rather demented man who declared himself King of the indigenous Araucana people of South America. Also in 1986 Sorin made LA ERA DEL ÑANDÚ, a short faux documentary “reporting” the hysteria caused by the “discovery” of a life-extending drug extracted from the South American ostrich. Sorin used actual news footage of the 50s, but with different voice-over narration “explaining” the hysterical mobs.

Amazingly, his 2nd feature film, EVERSMILE, NEW JERSEY (1989), had Jeremy Irons in the lead role of a traveling dentist traversing South America with the goal of fighting tooth decay and fear and ignorance. After making that film, Sorin returned to making commercials. Did something sour him on filmmaking once more? Interestingly he wouldn’t work with professional actors again, even though Irons is one of the best. Whatever the reason, it was not until 2002 that Carlos Sorin would take up feature filmmaking again.

Eventually, being re-immersed in the world of commercials began to bore him. He kept think there must be something else. After changing his technique of making commercials, now with real people, he began considering story possibilities also featuring non-actors. In 2002 he finally made another feature film, HISTORIAS MINIMAS, three loosely related stories in one, united primarily through setting. Considering his use of non-actors, it was certainly the safest approach. If one non-actor/story failed, he could always beef up the other two.

In 2003 he worked on one or more episodes of a TV series, even though he didn’t care for television. The next year came BOMBON: EL PERRO. Also in 2004 Sorin was one of ten directors making 10-minute films about the 18 July 1994 bombing of the charity organization, the Argentina-Israeli Mutual Association – at the time the single largest incident of terrorist acts against Jews since WW2. More TV work came in 2005. In 2006, he made another feature, EL CAMINO DE SAN DIEGO, in which an out-of-work lumberjack in the Argentinean countryside works with a wood carver and one day finds a large tree root that he swears looks like his futbol idol Diego Maradona. When he hears that Maradona is ailing in a hospital, he sets out on a long road trip to take the root to the soccer player to help him recover. And just this year he has made his 6th feature film, LA VENTANA, a film about the memories of an 80-year old man in where else but Patagonia. In this case his non-actor is a famous screenwriter.

Sorin’s ongoing decision to work with non-actors has become part of his signature style. His films are more character-driven than plot-determined. In fact, he doesn’t even think in terms of story at first. Thinking of a character is his initial inspiration. His characters must be marginalized in some way – often through poverty, loss of job, or age. He isn’t interested in characters who reflect on their own lives. Instead, he examines people who live and to whom things happen, but who are “no less profound in their thinking than a philosophy professor of the Sorbonne.” He is constantly looking for (and finding) the poetry of daily life, the unintended, unexpected bits of beauty, insight, or pathos.

In this way Sorin is very much part of a half-century tradition in cinema history. It was the Italian neo-realists of the late 40s/early 50s who discovered the beauty in real people. Politically appropriate for a leftist ideology, Italian neo-realism picked individuals out of the masses and focused on their tragedies and brief joys in such films as BICYCLE THIEF, MIRACLE IN MILAN, and UMBERTO D. Sorin credits the screenplays and essays of Cesare Zavattini and the films of Vittorio de Sica as influencing the spirit of his own films. Iranian cinema, especially the minimalist works of Kiarostami, has likewise informed Sorin’s view of how to make films. Korean cinema, especially films by Kim Ki-duk, is yet a more recent influence.

Carlos Sorin has his own approach to examining the human condition. Considering the economic difficultires of Argentina in the 90s and part of the 21st century, he declares rather boldly that he is interested in making films only about characters who might be called “losers” by others. “I couldn’t make a film about a successful man with a charming family, a prosperous business, and who plays tennis on the weekend. Within the losers the unemployed are the best of all. Because aside from the theme of economic urgency and survival, there is a much greater conflict – feeling detached from the world.” So, he veers from the strictly economic to the psychological. Without a job in the modern world, one often loses all sense of self and identity. That devastation is far worse than the economic one.

And where that uncertainty and sense of loss of dignity and identity play out is on the human face in Sorin’s films. He considers the face the landscape of the soul. “My characters are not characterized by memorable dialogue but by their faces, gestures, even silences.”

This makes for deceptively simple films. And yet the perceptive audience member will have to work. “I want to create films which require the viewer to determine what is happening to the characters without being given that information explicitly. I am interested in those human dramas which are expressed through filmic moments, through images and not words. People often express themselves more clearly through what they don’t say. In real life most people don’t go around saying clever things; they talk about banal things, but those banalities enclose and hide certain important things that transpire within the person.”

After making HISTORIAS MINIMAS in 2002 Sorin hoped his next one would be different but found himself drawn back to Patagonia with the idea of making an entire film about a man and a dog. He had realized that he should continue making films that he liked rather than try to recreate himself. He decided he was not going to be a Picasso of cinema, constantly turning out new styles and works. Rather than focusing on an old man and a dog as in HISTORIAS MINIMAS, he chose to look at a 52-year-old man thrown out of work after 20 years as a mechanic at a gas station. At first Juan Villegas tries to get by with making beautiful knife handles of rare wood or bone, but people aren’t able to pay enough for his well crafted pieces to make it really worth his while. Furthermore, his money is running out. But his mechanic’s skills are still good for something as he helps a woman whose car has broken down on the roadside. When she and her mother pay him with a dog – Bombón – his life will be forever transformed in a totally unexpected way.

Once more the look of Patagonia was perfect for the story – a stripped down, minimalist landscape, where the road is often the main feature of the terrain. Even though filming in that often barren land was difficult, Sorin still preferred its empty spaces for his background.

Casting for his films is always one of the most important elements. BOMBON would be no exception. Sorín certainly had basic ideas for the structure of the script, but the people who were finally chosen for parts would in large part determine the possibilities of the story. “I do my casting even before the script is finished and the way I complete the script is based on the people I have cast.” He didn’t have to look far to find the perfect protagonist for BOMBON. The actual Juan Villegas was employed parking cars at a garage near Sorin’s office. For other roles Sorin and his casting assistant traveled throughout Argentina, placing ads on TV and radio, putting up posters in little stores and shops, and looking at hours and hours of people talking into the camera. And then Sorin would make his casting decisions by intuition. As always he preferred people without acting experience.

Perhaps surprisingly until further consideration, Sorin never had rehearsals with his performers nor did he let them see any part of the script. Instead, using two Super-16 Steadicams, he would begin filming a particular scene. Although his average was a very costly 30 takes per scene, he often went as high as 50 or 60. “What you save from not having large salaries for professional actors can be spent on lots of raw film.” Sometimes he would get only one usable strip of film. When asked if his performers get tired of doing the same scene 50-60 times, he replies, “No, because each repetition is distinct. With a professional, you do five takes and all are alike with few differences. With a non-professional, it’s very different, one take can vary greatly from another – they say different things, make other gestures, and soon there will be something that works. In my films miracles are produced, if there are any, in the editing.”

Through this process Sorin has discovered that “reality intrudes on fiction constantly” and that is precisely what he wants. If it becomes chaotic, so much the better, because unforeseen moments can be captured. He doesn’t really wander completely away from the basic structure of the script, but he doesn’t feel held back by dialogue and situations he had envisioned months before. New locations can bring the unexpected and fortuitous.

“While filming I am already editing on a computer and simultaneously rewriting what reality is giving me. You always have to be ready for surprises, some pleasing, others not so much. Sometimes it all works out better than what you imagined, other times not.”

Even so, once he began filming BOMBON: EL PERRO with the parking lot attendant Juan Villegas, he almost stopped immediately. He began to think he had made a horrible mistake in hiring the middle-aged man. In HISTORIAS MINIMAS, he had the safety net of three stories and three protagonists. If one didn’t work he could amplify the other two. Here in BOMBON, everything depended on this one non-actor. To make matters even more dangerous and nerve-racking the co-star was a dog, even more unmanageable. It was a great risk. Sorin’s wife told him to calm down and go on with the filming, despite the difficulties. Ultimately it all worked out. And the great international success of the film was certainly due in large part to Villegas (as captured by Sorin’s direction and editing). Villegas’s face and expressions perfectly provide a complete, charming character that audiences can love.

Once filming was over and the travel to world film festivals ended, Villegas went back to parking cars even though he had won the “best actor” award at Nantes, France, where he was applauded by 3000 people. Sorin admits that “everyday that Juan parks my car in the garage, he asks, ‘Carlitos, isn’t there a role for me in your next movie?’” Only in 2006 was the director able to give Villegas another part, a very small one as a photography shop owner in EL CAMINO DE SAN DIEGO. After a wholly unexpected moment in the cinematic sun, Juan Villegas has had a somewhat more sobering, less delightful life than his film counterpart. It’s rather sad he didn’t get to keep Gregorio, who played Bombon (aka Lechien). —austinfilm.org